Goodbudget: Budget & Finance reviews
What users love and hate · 500 reviews analyzed · ★ 3.1
A digital envelope budget for people who deliberately don't want bank auto-sync and are willing to log every expense by hand; its strength is hands-on control and a shared household budget, its curse is that the same manual mechanic and monthly-only cycles push out anyone whose income and bills don't fit a once-a-month rhythm.
What users love
No bank sync isn't a missing feature — it is the product
The loyal core picks this app precisely because it does NOT touch the bank: logging each transaction by hand makes them pay attention and keeps their 'hands in' the budget. This segment leaves Mint and YNAB on purpose, because automation made them complacent about spending.
If you want an app that holds your hand, looks pretty and dumb and automatically syncs to bank accounts and does it all for you, this is not for you. This is an app for people who want to have their hands IN their budgeting.
We recently realized that all the "bells and whistles" were making us complacent. We needed something simple but also a tool that requires a little work and the right kind of work.
FANTASTIC you don't have to link your bank account.
Real-time shared budget is the main hook for couples and families
Multiple devices see one budget and one spouse's edits instantly appear for the other — turning the app from a tracker into a shared instrument of agreement. Couples stay for years for exactly this: 'both on the same page' plus personal envelopes 'without talking to each other.'
This app has been incredibly helpful for my wife and I to stay on the same page with our budget.
We also have our own envelopes that we can spend money out of without talking to each other.
Excellent app to help keep my family budget straight across multiple family members on their devices. I love that the edits they make appear across all devices.
A decade of longevity is the quiet retention moat against dead competitors
People have budgeted here for 8–12 years, back to the EEBA name, and don't look for a replacement — the app runs for years and produces real results (a paid-off house, thousands saved). Against a dead YNAB and a shuttered Mint, that track record becomes an argument in itself: users trust what outlived the competition.
We literally saved over $30,000 and paid off our house in 7 years. Thanks!
I have used this for about a decade. My wife and I refer to it daily. Great app. Super easy to use and very stable. Still supported after all these years.
I've been trying to live off my unsupported YNAB app for years. Finally it died and I did research on what switch to. Good Budget has surpassed YNAB in almost every aspect.
One-tap splitting of an expense across envelopes sustains discipline
Splitting one purchase across several envelopes at once — with the math done automatically — removes the main friction of daily logging: a mixed receipt is allocated in seconds. Together with the 'all envelopes' overview it sustains the habit of logging EVERY transaction.
The ability to split one transaction into multiple envelopes is such a time saver - it even calculates it for me! Love this app!!
love the all envelopes view where you can see where you should be at and where you currently at with your usage for that envelope
it also allows you to track payees and to split transactions, among other helpful features. So many other apps were missing at least one feature.
What users hate
That same manual entry loses anyone with high transaction volume
The lack of bank sync that anchors some users is a dealbreaker for others: with a high flow of purchases, entering everything by hand is impossible, so people go back to Excel or look for an app that links to the account. The product splits the market in two and hands half of it to competitors.
I want to like this app but without bank syncing I can't use it. We simply have too many transactions to keep up with to do them manually.
Does this app allow actually linking my bank account so that it automatically pulls the data? It's too much to manually enter it each time.
no import. no bank sync. no export even, apparently. totally lock in. the free version will be enough, until it isn't.
The monthly cycle ejects everyone paid every two weeks
Envelopes fill only monthly or yearly — yet a huge segment is paid biweekly or every four weeks (Australia especially). They're forced to recalculate by hand or quit in the first month: people's pay cycle simply doesn't match the product's one and only model.
I really like the envelope idea, the only problem I have is that I try to budget per check, and pay bills based on what half of the month it is, and there's no options to fill the envelopes based on which check I have.
not everyone gets paid monthly. or budgets monthly.. many industries in Australia are paid fortnightly so this app just doesn't work
Definitely not user friendly to setup. No real real guidance, and no obvious way to setup weekly or bi-weekly envelopes - only option is monthly or yearly which doesn't work for items like gas or groceries
The app does less than the website — which kills the point of the app
Core actions — adding income, paying debt, importing CSV, seeing envelope groups — only work in the browser. The user gets stuck mid-task and is sent to the website, asking every time why the mobile app exists at all.
Great concept, terrible execution. Important actions cannot be performed in the app and require a web browser. What's the point of the app if a browser is needed.
you need to go to their website to setup some basic transaction like your Income. Functionality are not the same via the app and on the web wich makes the experience disappointing
The app completely ignores envelope groups, unlike the website which groups the envelopes in both the reports and in the envelopes list and allows you to collapse groups you don't want to see temporarily.
The 10-envelope cap breaks the granular-tracking promise before activation
The free version gives exactly 10 envelopes, so people must merge categories — which kills the whole idea of 'tracking everything in detail.' They hit the wall during setup, before the product has proven any value, and leave on day one saying 'I didn't even get to try it.'
You're limited to only ten "envelopes" each month, so you have to consolidate bills together, which kinda defeats the whole tracking everything idea.
I didn't even get to try it, only gives you 10 spots for your items. I need a detailed budget
You only get 10 envelopes in the free version. Not helpful for people starting a budget.
The envelope metaphor is both the teaching hook and the entry wall
The 'first fill the envelope, then spend from it' model runs backwards to some people's intuition: they want to just log spending and watch a total rise, not a budget fall. Without the tutorial videos, newcomers don't grasp the logic and quit, convinced the app 'adds the expense to the envelope instead of subtracting it.'
The app feels backwards to me. Why am I filling virtual envelopes with money, then adding transactions to that when I could simply add my transactions and see the number I've spent increase instead of seeing my budget decrease?
It just adds the amount I spent TO my envelope, which defeats the entire purpose of a budget.
many of the negative reviews have a common theme - if you're not already familiar with the envelope system, like used by Dave Ramsay/Financial Peace, please watch the helpful tutorial videos for this app. It will make all the difference!
The input draft wipes when you switch apps — breaking reconciliation
The core workflow is logging an expense while glancing at the amount in the banking app. But switching to another app and back wipes everything already typed. This hits exactly the people who cross-check transactions — the most active, hands-on users the product exists for.
you cannot open a different app - such as a calculator app - without any unsaved progress being entirely wiped out. I'm talking a 'start from square 1' level of data being wiped out.
Goodbudget empties/forgets EVERY single input I had already filled. It drives me mad every time. I would give four stars if this would be fixed.
draft entries in forms often get cleared when switching to other apps and back (very annoying when checking transaction details!)
Income can't be changed after the fact, and you can't allocate by percentage
The product is designed around a fixed monthly income: with variable earnings you can neither update the amount later nor split by percentage ('50% to investing, 25%+25% to the rest'). The variable-income segment — freelancers, paid-per-check — runs into a rigid model and leaves.
You can't change your income at a later date to reflect income changes
I stopped because they don't allow for splitting by percentage, which is more useful for me who has variable income.
How in the world are there so many budgeting apps that don't have an option to allocate by percentage! It truly boggles my mind!
Playful envelope captions motivate some and push others to uninstall
The 'sad'/'happy' faces and lines like 'booo in the red' were meant as gamification, but for a budgeting newcomer still fumbling the setup, mocking an overspend backfires — it pushes them to delete the app rather than improve. A positive tone would have kept the same segment.
the app says "boooo in the red" or "negative money, interesting..." That's not motivating me to be better, it's motivating me to uninstall this app and definitely NOT pay for anything within it. Positivity would go a much longer way.
Love the little happy/sad envelopes based on my spending
It makes budgeting anr saving feel like a game.
Number entry via a custom calculator instead of the keyboard is daily friction
Amounts are entered through a built-in on-screen calculator rather than the phone's native keyboard, and the decimal point must be added manually by swapping keyboards. For an app where you log a transaction every day, this is micro-friction on the most frequent action — it accumulates and drags the rating down even among fans.
Please fix your number entry form. Use the phone native keypad, anything is better than what you have know.
please please change the transaction entries to include decimal points automatically so I just enter numbers. Don't make me enter a decimal point.
adding a decimal point to the value is annoying because there is no option. You need to swap keyboards while adding the amount.
A location prompt on every transaction contradicts the 'we don't touch your data' promise
The app asks for location access on every expense entry, and the refusal isn't remembered — it asks again and again, even with location disabled in settings. For a budget app whose whole reputation rests on privacy and not linking to your bank, this directly undercuts the positioning: users who paid for years downgrade specifically over it.
now suddenly they've started prompting me to allow location access every time I add an expense. And even though I've declined it dozens of times, and disabled location features in the app settings, it just keeps asking me over and over.
the fact that it wants to know my location for every transaction is extremely frustrating. It's not a feature that can be disabled and it prompts for every single transaction.
since a recent update on a new phone it keeps prompting me to grant permission to access my location. I see I'm not the only one with this problem.